All the evidence seems to me to be very difficult to reconcile, for the reasons that I have pointed out. It seems to me - or it seemed to me eventually - that there is only one explanation which, to my mind, must necessarily rather detract from the observations of the police officers who, of course, have the accused coming to a sudden, abrupt and complete stop in the middle of the road so as to cause Ms Hayden to run into the back of him. As I said before, unless the accused is completely barking mad, I can't imagine anybody doing that.
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[S]omehow these two vehicles found themselves vying for a position in the merging lineup and the accused got in front, to the annoyance of Ms Hayden - she felt that she had been cut off and she flashed her lights.
The accused, as I say, got in front of her in the lineup and, in my view, the only possible explanation of what happened is that he did that by speeding up and, of course, his partner gave evidence of him going faster and faster. Then when he got there, there was a car in front of him and he had to quickly slow down again. He may have been distracted by the flashing headlight in his rear vision mirror, or whatever, but I am satisfied that he then had to slow down and slow down suddenly and Ms Hayden ran into the back of him.
Now that, as I say, seems to me the only possible explanation. If it is right, the police officers were wrong about the manner of him coming to an absolute complete sudden stop. Although he must have been stopped, or almost stopped, for her to smash into him. They are also wrong about saying that there weren't any cars in front of him because the only way I can make any sense of all of this is to assume that there must have been traffic in front of him, as one would expect in a merging line of cars, and he got too close to the one in front and had to stop or slow down, and that's what caused Ms Hayden to run into him.
I reject, absolutely, any suggestion that she would deliberately have driven at high speed into the back of him. This situation, in my view, is caused by him over aggressively cutting in, in front of Ms Hayden and, as I say, having to stop. I can't see any other way of explaining what happened. The question then arises whether, to do that, amounts to reckless driving within the meaning of section 60 of the Road Traffic Act.
I find myself puzzling over that, too, given that this is a situation, especially in Western Australia, where drivers seem to be absolutely incapable of any sensible sort of merging - situations that arise only too often. But in the event, I would find the accused guilty of - once again of the lesser offence - of dangerous driving, section 61 of the Road Traffic Act (ts 6, 7).